Report reveals clandestine Swiss deal with PLO - SWI

DIRECT DEMOCRACY
SWITZERLAND: HOW TO
RISKY COMPROMISE
Report reveals
clandestine Swiss deal
with PLO
CULTURE POLITICS ! Conflict ! Disaster
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JAN 20, 2016 - 12:33
Switzerland and the militant
Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) concluded a secret deal in
1970 to avert further terrorist
attacks against the country.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)
newspaper says a delegation led by
Foreign Minister Pierre Graber met
senior PLO officials in Geneva to
negotiate a pact offering diplomatic
support for the Palestinian cause in
return for assurances to be spared from
attacks.
Passengers and crew of a Swissair flight
waiting at the Dawson's Field airstrip in
Jordan. Their jet was one of three
airliners hijacked by a Palestinian
commando in 1970 The first contacts between the Swiss
(Keystone)
minister and the Palestinians were
initiated by Jean Ziegler, according to the NZZ. The controversial leftwing human rights
advocate was a member of the Swiss parliament at the time.
The confidential negotiations risked creating a diplomatic crisis with the United States,
Britain, Germany and Israel, according to the report.
Details of the agreement are still locked away under a 50-year statute of limitations.
Speaking on public radio SRF,
Ziegler confirmed his role as go-between and advisor
for the foreign minister. However, he declined to say whether he took part in secret
meetings.
The 81-year old former professor of sociology said the secret deal was "immoral" and in
breach of legal principles, but it was justified for strategic reasons.
"This might be absolutely shocking, but the reward was that there were no more
attacks," he said. No trace
However, the foreign policy research centre
Diplomatic Documents of
Switzerland downplays the importance of the reported contacts between Switzerland
and PLO officials.
"The talks by Graber in Geneva in September 1970 were not known before, but they are
unlikely to have had a decisive impact on further developments in relations between
Switzerland and the PLO," a statement said on Wednesday.
The experts say they found no trace of the Geneva meeting in official documents.
They doubt whether closer official ties with PLO representatives in the mid 1970s were
directly connected to the alleged secret deal. However, the government was clearly interested to let the PLO set up an office in
Geneva to "reduce the danger of terror attacks in Switzerland", as the research centre
quotes official documents. Attacks and hijacking
In February 1970 a Swissair passenger plane bound for Tel Aviv crashed shortly after
take-off in Zurich, killing all 47 people on board. But the suspected mastermind of the
bomb attack, a Jordanian national, was never taken to court.
A year before, a pilot of the Israeli El Al airline was killed by four Palestinian attackers at
Zurich airport.
In September 1970, a Swissair flight bound for New York was hijacked by a Palestinian
commando and flown to Jordan to force the handing over of jailed Palestinian militants
in Switzerland. Passengers of a US and British jet were also held hostage in Jordan.
The report comes as the NZZ publishing house launches a book by one of its journalists,
Marcel Gyr, who spoke primarily to former Palestinian and Swiss officials as well as
Ziegler.
Urs Geiser, swissinfo.ch
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